“But every house has a chimney,” protested Twaddles. “Where’s the chimney?”
Before Bobby could possibly invent a chimney, Meg and Dot, the two boys’ sisters, came into the room, each carrying a doll.
“Wait till Norah sees you!” announced Meg severely. “My goodness, piling up the furniture like this! Mother will scold if you scratch that rocking-chair.”
“What you making?” asked Dot, her dark eyes beginning to dance. “Let me help, Bobby?”
Bobby sat down gloomily on the edge of the rocking-chair.
“I was building a house,” he answered. “Mother said we could ’muse ourselves quietly in the house. This is quiet, isn’t it? What’s the use of having furniture if a fellow can’t make something with it?”
“Well, I s’pose if you put it all back before supper, it’s all right,” admitted Meg, rather dubiously. “Only you know sometimes you do scratch things, Bobby.”
Bobby waived this aside. He had other, more important thoughts. 9
“I was just going to fix the chimney,” he explained. “See, this is the door, Meg, an’ over here’s the bay window. But we have to have people. People always live in houses. Don’t you want to put Geraldine and what’s-her-name in ’fore I put the chimney on?”
Dot, who was the doll Geraldine’s mother, clutched her closely, while Meg quickly picked up her doll from the couch where she had laid her.